Study: Is anti-meth law driving up cocaine use? (UALR Public Radio) - A three-state study led by Arkansas researchers suggests that laws intended to drive down the manufacture and use of methamphetamine in rural areas may be driving up the use of cocaine.

While findings from the $6.1 million study involving counties in Arkansas, Kentucky and Ohio were not conclusive, they did cause concern that anti-meth laws may be having unwanted side effects.

"We're really cautious in talking about this because we don't want to say that the law causes people to use cocaine, but it definitely raises the possibility that people are switching from one drug to another," said Tyrone F. Borders, lead author of the research report in the journal Addiction.

Borders said meth users who participated in the two-year study began reducing their use of the drug regardless of state laws that restricted access to drug store medicines used to make methamphetamine, such as cold medications.

"The meth laws, at least among these persons, didn't have much of an impact," said Borders, an associate professor in the College of Public Health at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences. "However, it was associated in our statistical analysis with a slight increase in cocaine use."

With a grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, researchers in the three states were promised by the federal government that information obtained in the study would not be used toward criminal prosecution.

With the help of former drug users, the researchers recruited 706 people, men and women, who used meth or cocaine but who had not gotten substance-abuse treatment for at least six months prior to the study.

Participants came from Lee, Phillips and St. Francis counties in Arkansas; Barren, Edmondson, and Logan counties in Kentucky, and Darke, Logan and Shelby counties in Ohio. They were given minimal fees of $50 for the initial interview and $10 for each referral who was found eligible for the research.

Primarily from interviews and urine tests, the researchers collected data on changes in the use of meth or cocaine among black and white residents in rural areas. By the end of the study, 559 participants had still not received formal treatment and drug use was down among both meth and cocaine users.

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